Walter
Please be aware that the Hermitage did not sell off parts of their
collection. The coins were stolen by Stalin and sent to the
German auction house
Felix Schlessinger in
Berlin for sale, to finance Stalin's communist idealogy. Schlessinger described them in some of the catalogs as "Dubletten" which was, as he later admitted, a lie.
The sales took place on
2. May 1933 (1,640 European coins and medallions, all from the Hermitage)
26. February 1934 (401 ancients, all from the Hermitage)
27. &. 28. February 1934 (1,405 European coins, medals and medallions, some from a "private
collection")
4. February 1935 (1,655 ancients, all from the Hermitage)
In the Hermitage there are a huge number of empty holders waiting, as the curator told
BCD several years ago, "for the coins to come
home again".
It was an absolutely criminal action committed on the orders of Stalin who, by stripping the Hermitage of over 4,000
rare and beautiful gold and silver coins, as well as lovely bronze coins, proved himself to be on the same level as Hitler's minions who stripped numerous European museums of their treasures - not to mention US troops who - against specific orders that museums etc. were not to be looted - helped themselves to the coins on display in the
Berlin museum and shipping them
home in the crates which every soldier was permitted to send back to the US uncontrolled. Which is why, now that so many of those soldiers are passing away and their family are inheriting their possessions, so many nice
ancient coins are coming onto the market "from my late father's
collection".